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mystery fiction

A Bad Night’s Sleep, Michael Wiley’s third detective novel, opens with protagonist PI Joe Kozmarski working what appears to be a boring job. He’s hired to investigate the repeated robberies of a Chicago construction site. Sure, it’s a glorified nightwatchman gig, but this job might get him closer to retiring in a certain north Florida fishing town he dreams about. The job gets too interesting too quickly, however, when the burglars arrive and begin stealing equipment and material. Then the police show up—and help rob the site. Kozmarski calls 911, more police arrive, and, in the firefight that ensues he shoots—and kills—one of the robber cops.

While waiting in jail to be charged—an event that never quite comes to light—Kozmarski reflects—

Every time I’d seen someone die I’d felt the world go a little quieter like I’d lost part of my hearing, and sooner or later the singing, laughing, and screaming would fade into a hushing wind of white noise. That had happened when my dad died. It had happened when Kevin, a boy I was supposed to be protecting, ended up twisted and broken on his mother’s kitchen floor. It happened. Shooting the cop felt worse. I’d ripped a little hole in the universe and I wondered what sound would fly through it.

Kozmarski’s little hole lets in more than strange sounds. The cop-shooting imperils his PI license, damages his (not exactly heretofore spotless) reputation, and leads undercover cops to threaten him (to the point of firing shots) as he leaves jail. The stress doesn’t exactly help protect his tenuous sobriety either, and Kozmarski’s soon on the sauce again (let’s not even mention that little bag of coke his “friend” sends him to help through these troubled times). Luckily (although that’s hardly an appropriate adverb here), Kozmarski’s friend on the force sets up another job for our distressed hero, one that could clear his name and clean out some of the dirty cops of the Chicago PD. Kozmarski infiltrates the corrupt gang of crooked cops, but as he plumbs deeper into the mystery, the line between good guys and bad guys becomes increasingly nebulous.

A Bad Night’s Sleep is a page turner telegraphed in terse, tense, vivid prose. Wiley’s plot and dialogue alike are hardboiled in the noir tradition of Hammett or Chandler, and his characters and pacing bristle with the gritty immediacy one might find in George V. Higgins. There’s a smart brush of black humor to A Bad Night’s Sleep that comes from Wiley’s characterization and his protagonist’s wry observations. And for all of his hard edges, we find in Kozmarski an engaged protagonist, a man of genuine pathos. Wiley delivers what readers want from an intelligent mystery—keen, suspenseful plotting, sharp action sequences, and a hero we can care about.